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CLEANING HOUSE: When Slobodan Milosevic lost the election, the people of Pozarevac realized that his son, Marko, was on his way out, too. Marko's Madona discothèque, above, closed soon after
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The town lies some 85 kilometers southeast of Belgrade, and its name — Pozarevac — is derived from the Serbian word for fire. Legend has it that once there was a forest in which a dragon lurked, terrorizing the neighborhood and occasionally snacking on local beauties. The dragon was eventually killed by a young hero called Jovan, but in the course of the battle the forest was set ablaze by the beast's fiery breath, and it burned so long that the town was named after the conflagration.
Until last October, Pozarevac was troubled by a different kind of monster. Slobodan Milosevic was born in Pozarevac, as were his wife Mira and son Marko. Although the ruling couple spent most of their time in the capital, the 26-year-old Marko preferred to live in this small town and treated it as a personal fiefdom for much of his father's rule. He was undoubtedly the richest man in Pozarevac, owning a discothèque and a radio station — both called Madona — an Internet service provider and a 24-hour pastry shop. He also invested in Bambiland, a grandiose amusement park just outside town.
But the younger Milosevic had his own ideas about amusement. "Marko and his friends used to ride around town in an entourage of jeeps with darkened windows," recalls Mile Veljkovic, a local journalist. "They were always armed and high on drugs. Sometimes they would beat up people just for the fun of it." Last year, Veljkovic himself was roughed up by Marko and his bodyguards after reporting on the birth of Marko's son. "He said that he would shoot my kneecaps off if I ever mentioned him or his family in a story again."
While the elder Milosevic reluctantly allowed token opposition to exist in Belgrade and other parts of Serbia, no such thing was tolerated in Pozarevac. In this town of 50,000, membership of an opposition party, once revealed, led to immediate job loss — and getting in Marko's way could be physically dangerous.
Zoran Milovanovic, 20, knew this when he decided to join Otpor, the student resistance movement. One evening in March after coming home from a protest rally in Belgrade, Milovanovic received a phone call from Marko's friend Zoran Ivanovic, saying he wanted to pay some back wages due from a stint as a waiter in Ivanovic's bar, Pasaz. Milovanovic was suspicious but decided to meet Ivanovic anyway.
That was a mistake. As soon as Milovanovic left his home, Ivanovic and two gun-toting friends shoved him into a car, beat him and drove him to see Marko. From his captors, Milovanovic learned that he had been spotted on television at the Belgrade rally. The trio drove him to the Madona radio station, where Marko appeared with a chainsaw. "He turned it on, and said I would not be the first person he had dismembered," recalls Milovanovic. He was eventually released after being forced to promise that he would leave Otpor and join the ruling party. Several other local Otpor members received similar threats.
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